These Neoneco Swing Speakers from Korea hook onto your iPod nano, classic or touch and provides sound where there was none before. It's not made for any sort of high fidelity sound reproduction, but at a battery life of 10 hours (it's got a separate power source) it provides bare-minimum sound on the go. Grab one from Korea if you really want one, but it is quite good if you want to share YouTube or iPod videos with other people and not get their earwax all over your earbuds. [Neometrokhan via AVING via Wired]

The one major bit out of AT&T's quarterly earnings call is that the iPhone 3G is selling twice as fast as the original iPhone did last summer—in case the unending squiggles of people trailing out of Apple Stores and AT&T shops didn't tip you off. They didn't actually say how many were sold, but we know that worldwide Apple sold a million of them as of nine days ago, just three days after launch. Of course, the hot $199 price—undoubtedly responsible for the phone's brief life on shelves—means AT&T won't actually make money off of it until 2010. You know, when we're on our fourth-gen iPhone. [Alley Insider]

It's funny how technology can really put a wedge between two people in a relationship. That is to say, finding a couple where both parties share a genuine love for gadgets seems pretty rare. This issue is especially problematic when video games are involved. We are constantly hearing stories about how some dude is turning down sex and ignoring his family to play games online. As stupid as all this sounds, I'm willing to bet that it is a major problem with a lot of couples. Plus, gadget obsessions can be tied in with spending excessive amounts of money, which only serves to complicate matters. That having been said, I have to ask: does your partner understand your gadget obsession?

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What you're looking at here is an actual Wii-like 3-D controller interface that can track objects like your hand in real time. It may look a little shoddy, but what's amazing is that this very functional 3-D interface was built by a hobbyist with parts most DIYers can find in their couch cushions—six resistors, aluminum foil, wire, a cardboard box, and an Arduino microprocessor to crunch the numbers. That's it. It couldn't be more simple. But how'd he pull it off?

The rig uses simple RC circuits to sense the distance of an object in relation to a set of capacitive plates (here, the aluminum foil with current running through it). The circuits feed their data to the Arduino, which processes them with builder kylemcdonald's custom Processing code (an open-source graphical programming language), and spits out raw 3-D coordinates that update 10 times per second for each sensor. Just a hint of the amazing things accomplished tinkerers can pull off with hackable microprocessors like the Arduino. [Instructables via Hack-a-Day]

The Gadget: Caps4Stix rubber thumbstick covers for Xbox 360 and PS3. They're meant to add more grip for better precision and control.

The Price: About $2 per pair.

The Verdict: Pretty good! I usually hate this rubbery add-on stuff that fattens up a sleekly designed gadget, but I have to admit, playing both the PS3 and Xbox 360 felt better with the caps than without. The texture isn't just more sticky, it also has a few nubs that support your thumbs as they push the sticks farther off center. (In picture above, left stick is capped, right is normal.) And the covers don't add too much bulk, either, even though the first few minutes of testing were definitely a strange sensation.

So do I play better with the Caps4Stix? No clue. But they aren't just a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. They are more like a subtle improvement on something that you'd never have realized was broken. Like a fix to a carbon monoxide leak if carbon monoxide just burned off a few brain cells instead of killing you.

Now if only you could buy them in a color other than black to match the 360 controller... [Caps4Stix]

The idea of controlling your DVR via your iPhone is nothing new, but this MythTV iPhone remote allows Linux DVR users to get in on the fun of using their phones as visual remotes. It's got a real-time program guide so you can easily set recordings, plus the standard channel and volume buttons to flip around channels with. The only thing we have to complain about is that the UI is fairly ugly and not refined at all, but it's bearable. Unfortunately all of us here use either TiVo or Media Center or the cheap set-top-box provided from our Cable company, so we can't test it out. Let us know how it works for you. [eHomeUpgrade]

How's this sound: rather than hopping on the subway, when in a large city you'd hop into a little pod hanging from an elevated track. It would have pedals. You would then pedal yourself around the city, working up a lovely sweat before you reached your destination. Sound good? No?

Well, thank your lucky stars that the people who run our cities have at least some sense in their heads, because it would be highly doubtful for this to appear in the flesh anytime soon. Even still, designer Geoffrey Barnett built one for his New Zealand adventure park as a proof of concept, hoping to convince people to build them elsewhere.

And while sure, maybe they're fun for racing when you're on vacation in New Zealand, good luck convincing anyone to commute to work in one of these things. No thanks. [Agroventuresvia Gizmag]

I love stupid gimmicks, don't get me wrong. But this cover is one of the worst ideas I've heard from a publication in awhile. Said the editor to the NYTimes: “Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years,” Mr. Granger said. “I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry.” Maybe you should like, invest in putting premium content on your website, or in E-books sold on Amazon instead of spending six figures to design a battery small enough to fit into an magazine cover that will only last 90 days, without any major refreshing of content. They might as well have used one of those hologram stickers found in 25-cent vending machines in the 80's.

This is really slick in some ways—as far as attention goes—but the bigger thing it shows is the terrible lack of understanding that most magazine editors have in dealing with the digital future of their publications. I mean, for Christ's sake, their website has categorized their first two links as 'women' and THEN features. This is Esquire!

To me and many others, Esquire is a legendary publication best known for its features and covers, but they've seen better days. (This year they won no national magazine awards.) I remember when I was at Wired, we proudly did a Banksy feature, before he was easy to find and unmasked and all that. Esquire assigned a feature later on, and word is that the writer had the balls to ask the Wired writer for a contact. (He said no.) The Esquire feature ended up being 3000 words about the writer hunting for Banksy by going into a few bars and asking if anyone knew him. There wasn't enough meat to run a front of book piece, let alone a feature. I don't know how this happens. I stopped reading Esquire regularly shortly after that, and even though I flip through my subscription (I get a lot of magazines I end up skimming 'til I find great content), I can't remember the last piece that really blew my mind, nor has there been a cover that had the editorial weight of those from the past, like the one of Ali being shot by arrows after his draft dodging problems.

So, Esquire, I'm glad you're reaching for boldness again, but don't fucking waste your budget on shit like this, trying to get into the Smithsonian with a trick. If you're trying to create a relic, good job. But to make history again, you're going to have to have a clearer understanding of the future of publishing and what your under-30 readers really want from you digitally. In the mean time, enjoy the press.

[NYT]

AT&T's Speech Mashups is a web-based service that will bring voice-activated search to the iPhone, as well as other Edge and 3G handsets. Instead of managing speech recognition on the actual handset, Speech Mashups sends the audio sample to the server, processes it and sends back a text transcription or command to your phone. Unfortunately for iPhone owners, this does not mean voice dialing or speech-to-text app support. Not at all.

AT&T is not currently planning to use this tech to manipulate current iPhone apps (Contacts? Maps? Mail?) but instead will deploy it in web services for a number of net-enabled handsets. This is a somewhat curious choice for AT&T, but it would be difficult to implement system-wide speech recognition without either modifying existing apps or running a (currently disallowed) background service to catch commands. Speech Mashups will be an interesting service for the other handsets it shows up on, but they already have simple voice commands. By building secondary voice capabilities like this for a phone without basic ones, AT&T has inadvertently highlighted one of Apple's most irritating restrictions on iPhone development. [Gadget Lab]

If there is one thing I can't stand it is getting into long-winded conversations with people on the phone. This is especially true if that person happens to be annoying. If I am forced to initiate the call, I find myself muttering a silent prayer that they won't pick up, but the fact of the matter is that annoying people are always available. The good news is that SlyDial has come up with a solution to this problem with a service that allows the caller to go directly to voicemail.

After signing up for the free account, users can choose between the basic free service with a 30 second ad tacked on, or skip the ad with a $.15 charger per individual message (there is also a $4.95 monthly and a $29.95 yearly plan). Then it is a simple matter of dialing 267-SLYDIAL then the number you wish to call. It could actually be a very handy service, although I would imagine that your contacts would catch on after awhile. [SlyDial via Webware via Lifehacker]

According to a rumor that's been getting a little traction on the Mac sites, the new iPod nano will be multi-colored. Notice that we said 'nano' and not 'nanos.' Because while the current nano line is offered in multiple colors, 9to5Mac is claiming that the next nano will have more than one color on each model. In addition, the storage capacity is said to be doubled alongside the inclusion of 'new features.' [9to5Mac]

Optics junkies at the University of Michigan have found a way to greatly boost the efficiency of OLEDs to produce 60% more light from the same amount of power as those previous, cranking out 70 lumens per watt. Their method uses a layer of five-micrometer-wide lenses mounted on top of a reflective grid, which coaxes the light out from the organic substrate and into the world. OLEDs to date have been held back by efficiency problems—they still can't match CFL bulbs' 90 lumens per watt, but they're getting there. This could mean lighting that adds even less power consumption to OLED's many benefits over compact fluorescents (longer life, better light, theoretical 100% efficiency, etc), and more energy-sipping OLED TV panels down the road. [Technology Review via DVICE]

There are gaming chairs that have speakers and a subwoofer, which are nice and have been done to death, but Gyroxus' gaming chair is a GAMING CHAIR. It's akin to the types of rigs you see in arcades that jiggles you like crazy in sync with whatever racing, flying or shooting game you've just thrown four quarters into.

The Gyroxus costs $479 and works with Xbox 360, Windows, PS3, PS2 and 'Nintendo', but neither of the two ordering options list any Nintendo compatibility. If the video after the jump is correct, all it does is lean forward, back, left or right depending on which way you move the center stick. Not only does this seem not all that comfortable, it'd be kind of a pain playing titles like Gears of War 2 on this thing. But racing games, on the other hand, could be phenomenal.

[Gyroxus via Born Rich via Uber Gizmo via Uber Review]

And here she is. After FCC commissioner Johnathan Adelstein withdrew his support today, the vote is now deadlocked and awaiting the yea or nay from Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican who is expected to approve the merger so all of this can finally be over and done with (something tells me a large batch of high-end satellite radio gear is now being priority-overnighted to Taylor's office to make sure everything is greased appropriately). If you're a subscriber, not a whole lot will change once the deal is finalized and the two merge parts of their programming, but you'll need new gear to take full advantage of any new subscriptions once the merger is wrapped up. [WSJ via CrunchGear].

The Gadget: A laptop docking station for your Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro that makes it extremely easy to plug in all your various ports in one easy lever-based motion instead of one by one like some sort of neanderthal. The ports are replicated in the back of the BookEndz so you can always keep your equipment 'plugged in.' BookEndz has been making docks for Apple laptops for years, and they're the number one search result on Google for 'Apple laptop docks' and 'MacBook Pro docks', so they're quite definitive.

The Price $299 for 15-inch MacBook Pro, $319 for the 17-inch MacBook Pro, $159 for the 13-inch MacBook, $274 for 15-inch PowerBook G4 and $179 for 12-inch PowerBook G4.

The Verdict: BookEndz does exactly what it advertises it does well. Slide your laptop onto the tray—which is exactly form-fitted for your size laptop—and flip the lever up. The two ends will dock neatly into your laptop's ports in a manner similar to the 2001 Spaceport scene, but without the Blue Danube playing in the background. It's very nice. To de-dock, just turn the lever the other way and all your ports will come ripping out of its sockets like Phil Hartman in the SNL all-drug Olympics.

But what you want to know is if it's worth it for yourself to pay $299 to automate the 60-second activity of finding all your cables and plugging it in. The answer? Maybe. If you're like us and you dock and de-dock your laptop multiple times a day, it's slightly easier to justify the price. If you're only occasionally going to be plugging in your monitor or USB cables, or going to replace your laptop with a newer model in the next couple years, then stick with what you have.

Nevertheless, this is as smooth an implementation of a laptop dock as we've seen. [BookEndz]

The kids over at CrackBerry got their hands on the new Blackberry Kickstart 8220—the first flip phone BlackBerry. And while they have yet to publish a complete review, CrackBerry definitely likes the hardware, claiming that RIM has not cheapened the build quality for its casual audience. But how does it match up to the BlackBerry Pearl? Pretty well, they claim.

...the KickStart has a lot going for it - bigger display, bigger/easier to type on keyboard and most important to some, OS version 4.6. I find the side by side keyboard shots to be almost comical - the KickStart's keyboard makes the Pearl's look like Mini Me in comparison... the KickStart is a more masculine SureType option in the BlackBerry family.

I dunno though, the KickStart is thicker, too, and that SureType keyboard is still inexplicably slanted.

It'll be interesting to see what the critics say when testing is final. [CrackBerry]

If there was a contest for the nerdiest piece of furniture ever made, my money would be on this Periodic coffee table. It has everything a science fanatic could ask for, including the actual elements (even the toxic ones) encased in a thick layer of resin to ensure safety. As a whole, the table is actually quite attractive—and it is sure to be a powerful conversation piece. Unfortunately, that conversation may be internal as your date wonders how she got there and how she can get out of there without offending you. Available for a whopping $9,500. [Element Displays via Born Rich]

This, my friends, is absolutely shocking. That guy who made himself the laughing stock of the entire internet by getting himself tattooed up with not one, not two, but three Zune logos, has decided to cover up the tattoos. It's not out of shame, however. We've known for a while now that this Adonis has no shame. The reason is much, much better.

I am done. I have had the Zune since day 1 and have noticed little improvement. I have tried my best to support them every step of the way but the recent Xbox Live announcement at E3 made me lose it. To not include Zune Marketplace or the ability to load videos from Xbox Live to your Zune made me finally give up. I am in the works of figuring the best way to get a new tattoo to cover the logo on my arm. Thanks for all the harsh comments and you will see very little of me anymore.

That's right folks, the biggest Zune fan in the world is giving up on his beloved because Microsoft didn't offer Xbox integration.

I really wonder if this guy understood that tattoos were permanent when he got these. I mean, he got them on day one, during the first, unimpressive generation of the Zune's life. It was never a very exciting player, never offering anything that couldn't be found elsewhere, but he saw something there that he was convinced he would be passionate about for the rest of his life. Now, not too far in the future, he's throwing in the towel because he can't load videos on his Zune from his Xbox? Come on dude, you were so into the Zune, but you're giving up over something as silly as that? I thought you were stronger. More stubborn. More stupid. You've really let me down.[ZuneScene]

You actually know what some of the crazy doodles on the side of an HDTV means when it comes to video—720p, 1080i, 1080p. Congrats, you're ahead of most people, like my mother. But do you understand the alphabet soup of audio, the confounding constellation of logos on your Blu-ray player's box? While there are basically two rival home-theater audio encoders—Dolby and DTS—they each have several different quality levels and options for different scenarios. Yeah, it's a lot to keep up with, and it annoys us too. So we asked Dolby and DTS to put down their guns for a sec and help us sort it out.

We're assuming you know some of the basics—like that 5.1 audio is five channels of audio positioned at center, front right, front left, back right and back left, and then one subwoofer channel. And that a higher bit rate means more audio data is coming through, which, generally, means it's higher quality and gonna sound better, since you're losing less of the original studio sound.

The building block of digital audio is 'pulse code modulation'—an old technology used for CDs and everything since. It can be rendered in several resolutions, from 16-bit stuff on CD to 24-bit on newer DVD and higher-res formats. It can also have varying frequency ranges, typically from 44.1KHz to 96KHz. Without going into more detail, you just need to know that PCM is bulky, and it is this PCM data that both DTS and Dolby work to encode into more manageable files. When audio tracks are decoded in a disc player, they are either sent out analog via multichannel RCA outputs, or they become PCM tracks that any digital receiver can easily interpret.

We're taking you through the major branded audio formats that you'll run into if you're dealing with a home theater, or hell, a Blu-ray player.

First up: Dolby. There are basically three tiers of audio: Dolby TrueHD at the top, then Dolby Digital Plus, then good old Dolby Digital.

Dolby TrueHD is a lossless compression format that is bit-for-bit identical to the studio masters. It can handle a bit rate of up to 18 megabits per second, and support as many as 14 channels of audio, though you're more likely to see it at 7.1. It's actually optional in the Blu-ray spec, but it's supported by the PS3 and most other new Blu-ray players. Some players decode the TrueHD internally, then stream out uncompressed PCM audio through HDMI, while others can send the TrueHD file itself out over HDMI in bitstream for the receiver to decode.

Dolby Digital Plus is the next step down. It still delivers 7.1 audio, but at a max bit rate of 3Mbps. It's a more efficient codec than the original Dolby Digital, and is a mandatory minimum in the Blu-ray 1.1 spec. Dolby Digital Plus can be used for Bonus View picture-in-picture audio tracks on a Blu-ray disc, with the main audio track encoded as TrueHD.

Dolby Digital is the lowest rung, at 5.1 audio channels, running at 448Kbps on DVD (though a richer 640Kbps on Blu-ray, used, again for special features or supplement language tracks).

DTS's offerings follow a similar tiered setup.

DTS-HD Master Audio is at the top. It's a lossless format that is also bit-for-bit identical to the studio master. It supports a bitrate up to 24Mbps (though the average Blu-ray flick's audio is only about 2-3Mbps, with 4-5Mbps spikes) and up to eight channels (like 7.1). (It too, is supported by the PS3.)

DTS High Resolution Audio is below that. It also supports eight channels at a constant bit rate of up to 6Mbps. It's for situations where a studio doesn't want to eat up disc space with a full lossless track (like bonus features or tracks), though DTS told us 95 percent of studios who use DTS use the full HD Master Audio.

DTS Digital Surround is down at the DVD end, with support for 5.1 channels and bandwidth up to 1.5Mbps, though post-2000 DVDs typically keep the track at 768Kbps to save disc space.

You may have heard a few things about Dolby ProLogic II or IIx, or maybe DTS Neo:6. These aren't digital codecs, so much as they are 'matrix' programs that take stereo tracks and route it to to the different speakers in a surround system. A vestige from pre-digital days, people used to master stereo tracks deliberately for ProLogic—try watching The Simpsons opening credits through your receiver with ProLogic turned on.

Dolby and DTS also have virtual surround technologies that do the opposite of matrixing: They take 5.1 tracks and perform hocus pocus on them so that they sound surround-y, but play through stereo speakers or headphones. It's more subjective, and has a whole different science to it, so maybe we'll save it for another time.

That, in a nutshell, is what all of those Dolby and DTS logos on the back your Blu-ray player, A/V receiver or movie box means. If you want to know how 'golden-eared' audiophiles feel about the highest qualities, and how well they fare against uncompressed PCM, check out this informative piece from Home Entertainment Magazine. As a rule, DTS HD Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD will kick ass, but unless you have a $50,000 sound system, you may not be able to tell the difference between the middle and top tiers anyway.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about Dolby, DTS, Dubbly, Dobby or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with 'Giz Explains' in the subject line.

Spilling soda is a death sentence for gadgets. Even if it still works, that damn thing is going to be sticky forever. The new 'Pour Thing' helps prevent spills from awkward 2-liter bottles using a container that can be manipulated with an easy push. To be honest, it seems that this thing could actually cause more spills than it prevents because you would have to put it on the edge of a table to finish it off. Plus, the physics of the swinging action could catch someone off guard if they are not paying attention. Using 2-liter bottles sucks anyway—I say stick with nerd-friendly cans. Available for $19.95. [Solutions via 7 Gadgets]